Trusted Smart Person Needed

[Blackthorn]

Very few people I know have any artistic knowledge, me included, and the few who do are too nice to give constructive criticism. I've noticed there's quite an interest in art in this forum, so I want someone with plenty of artistic skill and knowledge who can give feedback on the few drawings I occasionally churn out.

I don't wanna post them publicly cus well, this is this internet. So if you're that special someone I'll PM/email/IM the pictures to you.

Also just a warning, this is very much hobby art done for largely cathartic purposes. If you're used to high quality, this will not be for you.

 

[Krynn72]

lol, you're afraid of the internet. lol.

We have a lot of good critique givers here, just post em and ignore what few flame posts may show up.

 

[Smoke]

Yeah, sometimes a good crit can seem like the person is being an asshole, but roll with it.

Post 'em.

 

[Blackthorn]

I'm more afraid of theft. I'm well aware the chances of that happening are about as low as me ever living in a crime-free area, but my luck is just terrible so I'm not taking any risks.

Chilifan's contacted me so that's who I'm gonna stick with.

Thanks all, case closed.

 

[Cavalry]

You know you can watermark them to prevent theft.

 

[Blackthorn]

How exactly do you do that?

 

[Cavalry]

In visible watermarking, the information is visible in the picture or video.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking

Just copyrighting your image basically.
http://www.shutterfreaks.com/Actions/WatermarkSignatures/SampleDiagonal.jpg
just to give you an idea

 

[Blackthorn]

Oh God I do not know why I didn't think of that.

In chronological order:

The Parent

Falling

BellyAche

Happiness

Fair Fight

And to lighten the mood a comic about grief:

Dealing with Grief

Here is the conversation so far with Chilifan so you guys know what's already been covered:

OK, now bear in mind I'm not very good with giving advice, but here goes.

First of all, you're very good with shading. Your drawings have a lot of contrast and really stand out, something that's not easy to get right. I guess you're working on a fairly large scale? The light areas are smooth and there's not much graining either. Are you using just graphite pencils? It does look as though you've used ink, which would definitely help with the contrast. If you have just used pencil, the lines in Falling are extremely sharp and must have taken a good deal of precision.
I guess you like geometric drawing as opposed to a sort of rough, sketchy style. I always think that having clearly defined lines like in your work is a good thing, and you've certainly got that nailed. Perspective looks good too, if you haven't done much of this before you've obviously got a great natural talent.
The only thing I can really suggest is to work on the smoothness of your outlines, particularly curves. I can sympathise with you if you've got unsteady hands (stress is not good for drawing, heh). Since you're so good with shading I assume you tend to shade outlines, giving the uneven widths in some drawings. Try to be more confident with it, you can get an even more defined and precise effect if you just take a little more time.
I love your cartoon style as well, it's something I've tried and failed at too much. Your proportions are great and the simplified shapes turned out well. Very dry, British sense of humour too. What I would say it try to go right up to the lines with the cross-hatching, just to make it that little bit smoother.

Hope I've helped a little. As I say I'm not much good with helping people. Some of the things I've suggested I have yet to sort out in my own work so I'm a little unsure of those. Basically, you should definitely carry on drawing, not sure if you're studying it at college but it might be worth it. I'd love to see you try some Half-Life drawings too, if you play the games. There's probably a lot you can help me with.

Anyway, hopefully I don't sound too up myself, I know I come across as egotistical but I try not to. If you want to ask anything else, I spend far too much time on the forums when I should be revising, so I'd probably get any messages within a matter of minutes.

Well to give you more insight into how I draw them, I use a whole set of graphites, no pen at all. I'll start off with a 2H for the basic plan, really light, rough and sketchy. I go over the lines and shading again and again, each time on a softer pencils until the lines are thick

I'll then scan the images and touch them up in Photoshop, adding more contrast to give them that pen-like look. The scanning makes them appear far larger than they really are; all my work is done simply on plain A4. The drawings rarely take up anywhere near the whole page, Happiness for example is no larger than 15cm tall. I work very close to the paper, since I like drawing tiny details with precise geometry.

With Falling I concentrated first on making the lines a constant thickness, and used rulers to keep it all straight. I then sharpened a pencil to add the harsh edges. I'm glad you like it as it's one I'm most proud of.

After your advice of smoothing the curves, I can now see where I need to improve that. Many of the lines do seem shaky with inconsistent thickness. The likely cause of this is because I tend to do these drawings in the heat of the moment. I'll try more precision on future work. I may also try working on larger pictures, as the size of my drawings does limit quality when enlarged on a screen.

Cartoons are something I've been drawing all my life, and is probably why I prefer harsh outlines, I'm not very good at all at drawing true-to-life. I don't take any art courses, as I prefer it to be a personal interest.

Thanks mate, you didn't sound egotistical at all. I can now see where I can improve, much appreciated.

Now make me better!

 

[Unfocused]

Weird stuff, but it's kinda cool.

Anyway, I don't think you need to watermark your work. Couldn't you just post a resized version of your image and keep the highest resolution one? If anyone ever wanted to claim one of your images as his own, you'd be able to prove ownership, by supplying the highest resolution image.

I don't know if stuff works like that, but it makes sense when you think about it.

 

[Blackthorn]

Shameless bump here, but I would like some feedback.

If a moderator could change the title, that'd be swell.

 

[Krynn72]

Kind of hard to critique this sort of stuff since its so "out-there" in terms of content. The only things we can really comment on is technical stuff like line quality and shading.

I think the first one "The Parent" is all around too dark. There is no bright areas in the whole drawing besides the background. You have darks, and mid tones, but not light areas.

Your shading in a few of them dont really look like you controlled it well. It looks like in many places you drew your line work, and just took your pencil and lightly shaded everything, just ignoring the lines. Im referring mostly to the areas on The Parent, Happiness and Fair Fight that have the swirly design bits.

For the comic one, the hands dont look like they were well designed for the character. They look like super-cartoony hands that wouldnt belong on a human, but the rest of the drawing isnt quite so hyper-cartoon style, and he is in fact, human. Other than that, I think with the slight perspective we get from the placement of the "camera" we should be seeing some of the arm rest on the couch, rather than a full on front view of it.

 

[MJ12]

Well in honesty, I can start by saying that your style is very cool, so you do have a good foundation to work from.

 

[VirusType2]

I guess that makes me the biggest fan. some of these are amazing. awesome modern aztec kinda style in some of these.

my favorite is the first one, and there are a couple that are similar that I really like as well.


as for copyright, all you have to do is put 'copyright [the year] [your name]' on the thing. it doesn't have to cover the image at all, you can put it in the border. That is legally protected. However, they could crop it and try to use it, but legally, you could prove ownership and sue the crap out of them and easily win with proof.

Putting your name over top is very secure though, but it's not fun to have on my hard drive to view or for me to use as a wallpaper of course. disappointing. I can see why you'd want to watermark them though.

 

[Blackthorn]

@Krynn: You're pretty damn right there. I do tend to spend ages meticulously doing all the patterns, going over them layer by layer, then when it comes to shading I do whole blocks in the same tone. Laziness I guess is to blame for that, I'll try and improve in that area. As for The Parent, it was my first and I messed up a lot of the shading, adding a few layers too many, especially around the child which caused many to not even realize it was there.

@ZT: Thank you for the kind words.

@VT2: If you, or anyone here for that matter, want versions without the watermark, just request and I'll gladly send them in a PM. I trust the members of this forum, it's just the fact that it's a public forum that makes me post watermarked versions here.

 

[MJ12]

So wait, you don't have to go through a further process to copyright something other than just putting the symbol, year, and your name?

 

[Crushenator 500]

Ditch the disgusting watermark, I can barely even see your drawings under it

Nobody is going to steal these, trust me

I like the bellyache and happiness ones

 

[VirusType2]

@VT2: If you, or anyone here for that matter, want versions without the watermark, just request and I'll gladly send them in a PM. I trust the members of this forum, it's just the fact that it's a public forum that makes me post watermarked versions here.

yea I would love that. You could zip them up or I could just select my favorites if that will save you some trouble. I really like your art

 

[Blackthorn]

Done.

Thanks to all who have commented, this had been more positive than I had anticipated.

 

[Smoke]

Loosen up, don't be so protective over sketches. You should stop worrying about theft and start drawing more if you want to improve.

Start with basic exercises, light and shade, form, rythm, do anatomy studies, work from pictures, anything.

If you want to gain a bit of insight into creating depth (making your image appear 3 dimensional) I suggest doing these exercises. ALL of them.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108180

And some reference for human forms and details.

http://div.dyndns.org/references/